Broken Angels

by Richard K. Morgan

Series:

Takeshi Kovacs #2

Publisher:

Del Rey

Copyright:

2003

Printing:

March 2004

ISBN:

0-345-45771-4

Format:

Trade paperback

Pages:

366

This is the second of Morgan's novels about the cynical ex-Envoy Takeshi
Kovacs, following Altered Carbon, but it
takes place some thirty years later and is quite readable on its own. The
only references to the previous book are elliptical and the sleeve
technology underlying the plot is explained in a brief introductory note.
(I much prefer that technique to an intrusive explanation in the book
itself.)

Like Altered Carbon, Broken Angels is a violent, angry,
cynical story that features a great deal of gunfire and gore. Unlike
Altered Carbon, Morgan moves away from the noir detective genre and
more firmly into thriller, although something of a mystery remains. The
opening of the novel finds Kovacs working as a mercenary, recovering from
being wounded and accepting an offer from a sleazy corporate executive and
rogue pilot to spring an archeologue (Martian archeologist, basically)
from a prison camp on the war-torn planet he's serving on and go after a
prize bigger than the war: an intact Martian spacecraft and an
instantaneous travel gate. The Martians, in this universe, are apparently
extinct but left behind the renmants of a star-faring civilization and
various toys that humans have so far failed to make much sense of, but
nothing like this has been found before.

Kovacs and the corporate exec put together a mercenary team from
personality cores saved from killed soldiers. In this world, the
technology of capture of human minds has been perfected and everyone wears
a personal "black box" at the top of their spine that records their
personality and memories. Bodies are only "sleeves," replaced (if one has
the resources) when they die provided that the box is intact.
Altered Carbon explores the politics and social impact of sleeve
technology in greater depth; here, it's just world background, a way of
making some deaths worse than others in a military setting where people
die constantly, and a way to make characters go through fatal situations
without killing them off. The place that has to be captured and
investigated is contaminated by fatal quantities of radiation, so the
characters spend most of the book dying slowly from radiation poisoning.
It adds to the cynical atmosphere.

The mercenary team Kovacs and the corporate exec put together are
introduced in interviews from Kovacs's perspective in a very useful
section that I kept referring back to. This was another nice small touch
of technique; it was more effective than a dramatis personae,
even if a touch hard to flip back and find. Morgan has a talent for
characterization, particularly of desperate, fool-hardy, or cynical
military and ex-military types, and his cast is an excellent mix. Both
Altered Carbon and Broken Angels are told in first person,
but I felt I got a stronger feeling of Kovacs from this book because of
the excellent character interactions. Morgan is a good war writer, at
least of this sort of irregular, small-scale special ops unit. The dark
humor, sharp observations, underlying anger, and propensity for both
sudden violence and difficult loyalties captured here made the characters
and their interactions feel real to me.

The best part of Broken Angels is Kovacs's competent and laconic
attempts to get through life, survive, and still live with himself
afterwards. He pretends to have few morals, and sometimes may believe it
himself, but has a way of honoring deserved obligations (and discarding
undeserved ones) that shows sudden flashes of depth. The revelations on
the Martian spacecraft tie in quite well with his attitude and let Morgan
show additional depths to Kovacs's reactions without direct exposition.
Kovacs is angry, quick to kill, dangerous, and occasionally vicious. He's
a product of an extremely violent environment and career and doesn't wear
a safe covering mask. Despite that, I came away from the book liking and
in a way admiring him.

The plot is functional and engrossing, although not without rocky spots.
It drags a bit in the middle when the team is waiting to crack the opening
sequence of the gate, and again in some of the extended descriptions of
the Martian spacecraft. This is not a Big Dumb Object story, even if it
looks like it will be at points; exploration of the spacecraft is not the
point of the plot. It provides an exotic setting for several fight
sequences, some strong emotional experiences, and an opportunity for some
of Kovacs's commentary on war. The end of the mystery and intrigue
portion of the plot is satisfyingly twisty (although concluded with a bit
too much exposition). It's mostly there, though, to provide a backdrop
for Kovacs as a character.

This is a purer and more focused book than Altered Carbon. It's
not as rich with ideas, but it's richer in close examination of the
military caste of Morgan's future world. It's not a comforting book for
people who believe in the inherent nobility of combat; it felt emotionally
real and jagged to me. If you liked Altered Carbon, this is
different and more military but has a similar tone and even deeper
characterization of Kovacs. Recommended, unless the violence of realistic
military SF is a complete turn-off.